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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE COMING CREED 

BY 
PARLEY PAUL WOMER 

M 

Author of "The Relation of Healing to Law," 
" A Valid Religion for the Times" 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH &f COMPANY 

1911 






Copyright, 19 10 
Sherman, French & Company 



(gCI.A2787l3 



TO THE 
DANFORTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 

OF SYRACUSE, NEW YORK 
IN APPRECIATION OF THE FRIENDSHIPS 
THAT WERE MADE DURING FOUR 
YEARS OF PASTORAL SERVICE 

"Follow Light, and do the right — for man can 

half control his doom — 
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the 

vacant tomb. 
Forward let the stormy moment fly and mingle 

with the Past. 
I that loathed have come to love Him. Love 

will conquer at the last." 



PREFACE 

The question as to whether Christianity 
should be considered primarily a system of 
doctrine, or a way of life, is of fundamental 
importance. For centuries the former idea has 
overwhelmingly predominated. Life has been 
subordinated to dogma. The effort of the 
church has been to crowd the eternal truths 
of the Gospel into narrow and unelastic creedal 
statements^ and to make assent to these the 
condition of its fellowship. This is the dog- 
matic ideal of church life which has become 
so strongly intrenched in the thinking of many 
Christians that it seems to them like treachery 
to the cause of Christ even to call it into 
question. 

One of the most significant features of the 
present religious situation is the growing dis- 
content with the dogmatic ideal of church life. 
The feeling is wide spread that the creeds, 
which in the historic orthodox churches stand 
for Christianity, are in their present form 
the survival of a thought world which has been 
outgrown, and that they are consequently a 
hinderance to faith rather than its bulwark. 

The writer profoundly sympathizes with 
this feeling. He believes that the dogmatic 
ideal has been a source of great hurt to the 
church, that it has been the chief cause of 
our endless divisions, that sectarianism is to 



PREFACE 

a very great extent its product, and that it 
will have to be abandoned before there can be 
that unity of believers that Jesus had in mind 
when He prayed that the disciples might be 
one with Him even as He and the Father are 
one. 

To many churches which have inherited 
complex and elaborate creeds, the difficulty 
seems to lie in their complexity and elaborate- 
ness, and hence the movement in not a few 
cases that looks toward reduction and simpli- 
fication. However, it is not merely the simpli- 
fication of the dogmatic ideal as a basis of 
church life that is needed, but its absolute sur- 
render. It must be remembered that the 
church began without the dogmatic formulas 
and it has no more need of them now than 
it had in the beginning. 

The idea of Christianity as a way of life, 
the spirit of which is love, rather than as 
a system of theological and philosophic doc- 
trine, is one that appeals to the writer with 
great force, and in the pages which follow 
an effort has been made to set forth this idea 
as the basis of a true church life. The move- 
ment for Christian unity has begun, to the 
careful observer it is evident that it is daily 
gathering force, and it seems to the writer 
that it is along the lines here indicated that 
unity is destined to be realized. It will be 
noted that the distinguishing feature of the 



PREFACE 

coming creed is its emphasis upon unity of 
spirit rather than intellectual statement or form. 

Parley P. Womer. 

Park Congregational Church, 
St. Paul, Nov. 15, 1910, 



THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 
CHURCH AND A SECT 



With all lowliness and meekness, with long 
suffering, forbearing one another in love; giving 
diligence to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond 
of peace . — Paul . 

" Part as we may with what once was de- 
manded by the Church, there is something— and 
that too, the very holiest influence of life — that 
is still with us; and this residuary truth, this 
Divine Spirit, which emerges from the mixed in- 
heritance of Christendom, when all that is per- 
ishable has been discharged, does but own its 
descent, and look up with fitting reverence to its 
fountain head, when it claims the name of Chris- 
tian . ' ' — Martineau . 



THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 
CHURCH AND A SECT 

That there is an important and far-reach- 
ing distinction to be drawn between a church 
and a sect has not hitherto received proper 
recognition. Religious sects of every descrip- 
tion have flourished in our midst and each has 
called itself a church. In this country alone, 
according to a recent estimate, there are 
one hundred and forty different branches 
of the church, or denominations, most of which 
have more or less the character of a sect. So 
little insight, in fact, has characterized our 
thinking in this respect that sectarianism has 
been generally accepted as a substitute for 
a church life. 

The time is manifestly ripe for a rediscus- 
sion of this whole subject. To discerning 
minds it is evident that sectarianism has nearly 
run its course. There are many indications 
both within and without the various religious 
bodies which clearly show that a church life 
is slowly but surely rising to take the place 
of the sects. 

Broadly speaking, the purpose of the church 
is to give organized expression to the religious 
life that has its source in the Christian revela- 
tion. The character of the church, therefore, 
is necessarily determined by the character of 

1 



2 THE COMING CREED 

the revelation in which it originates. So far 
as any religious body shares the scope and 
aims of the Christian revelation and gives 
expression to its essential spirit it may be 
said to be a church. When, however, the spirit 
of Christ is narrowed down, when conditions 
of membership are imposed by a religious 
organization that limit the manifest scope and 
intentions of Jesus, it has the character of 
a sect. 

The most impressive thing about the religion 
of Jesus is its note of universality. There is 
nothing about it that is merely local. It be- 
longs to no particular time, place, or people, 
because it belongs to all times, places, and 
peoples. It bursts through all barriers and 
limitations. It divests itself of all temporal 
and local color. It can neither be said to be 
ancient nor modern. It is not Greek, Jewish, 
Galilean, Asiatic or European. It strikes 
the note of universality, by adapting itself to 
every sort of environment without losing its 
essential character; by clothing itself with the 
peculiar institutions, philosophies, customs and 
points of view that have characterized the 
different ages to which it has been addressed, 
without becoming identified with any of these; 
and by speaking alike to the heart of the king 
and the servant, the philosopher and the 
peasant, the saint and the sinner, and yet al- 
ways remaining essentially the same in spirit. 



CHURCH AND SECT 3 

The Christian religion is not a cult, a phi- 
losphy, a ritual, nor a theology; it is a spirit 
of life. As such it has to adopt the garb of 
every age and people to which it speaks, but 
in its real and underlying character, it is al- 
ways different from the garb it wears. Other- 
wise it would not be the universal religion. 

Turning to almost any part of the message 
of Jesus, we are impressed with the idea of 
comprehensiveness. Take, for example, His 
habitual representation of God as Father, and 
what other conception of the Deity is so 
wonderfully suited to the needs of all classes 
and conditions of men? Fatherhood is uni- 
versal, and although not always awakening the 
same tender and reverent feelings the concep- 
tion, nevertheless, is sufficiently understood to 
bring God within the angle of each man's vision 
and to offer a proper basis for a worthy inter- 
pretation of His character. Take also the 
ideas of sin and forgiveness and note how 
they are presented by Jesus in the terms of 
universal experience. The sublime picture 
drawn with such skillful touch in the parable 
of the prodigal spoke not only to the heart 
of the Jew of Palestine, who lived in the age 
of Jesus, but it speaks to the sinner and 
the outcast of every race and age. Take 
Christ's word about sympathy and service as 
presented in the story of the good Samaritan, 



4 THE COMING CREED 

about purity of heart, about relief from weari- 
ness, worry and care, about the duty and 
the joy of self-sacrifice, or about the endless 
life, and how marvelously they all appeal to 
the instincts and needs of the common heart! 
These elements and principles of Christ's 
teaching, selected merely at random, make it 
evident to all who will stop to reflect upon 
them that the Christian message in its essential 
and underlying character is universal. As 
the right key fits all the wards of the most 
complicated lock, so does the Gospel of Jesus 
satisfy all the manifold needs of human nature. 
To all alike He says, — " Come unto Me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden and I will 
give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and 
learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart ; 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls." The 
marvel of it is that His yoke or His way of 
life is suited to all, irrespective of tempera- 
ment, point of view, race or class. 

Have the followers of Jesus maintained the 
catholicity of His spirit? It is the failure of 
organized religion at this point that accounts 
for the sects. That which Christ made broad 
enough to fit all men, has frequently been 
narrowed down to fit a particular kind of men. 
Some interpretation of His message that is 
local, racial, limited, has been seized upon, 
exalted and regarded as fundamental. The 



CHURCH AND SECT 5 

outer garb has been thought of more import- 
ance than the spirit within. There has been 
failure to realize that the religion of Jesus 
may express itself in a thousand different 
forms, and that "just as the roof of some 
splendid mansion unites a hundred rooms of 
different size and shape, and just as the one 
blue sky overarches and unites mountains, 
pastures, and vineyards, so the spirit of Jesus 
should unite disciples of every temperament, 
shade of belief, and point of view." 

Sectarianism is of many different forms and 
types. In the case of not a few religious 
bodies at the present time it is manifestly that 
of an antiquated and impossible creed. Con- 
ceptions of God and man, and ideas of the 
life in God that are repellent to the educated 
mind, are made the conditions of fellowship, 
and views of nature and interpretations of 
history that are plainly opposed to the find- 
ings of science are insisted upon. Of the one 
hundred and forty different branches of the 
church that exist in this country alone, by 
far the larger number, including many of the 
leading bodies, are hampered by a sectarianism 
of this kind. While rendering valuable service 
to society, and while thoroughly Christian in 
many ways, their usefulness is limited and they 
are shut out from the character of a true 
church by an antiquated and impossible creed. 



6 THE COMING CREED 

In certain cases it is insistance upon the 
value of the literal observance of certain 
symbolic rites, and the failure to exalt the 
inner spirit above the outer form that makes 
the condition wherein the sectarianism lies. In 
still other cases it is the over emphasis of a 
peculiar phase of emotional experience, the 
constant iteration of a single issue to the exclu- 
sion of other equally important claims, a 
narrow range of emotional sympathies, or an 
inability to appreciate the value of other points 
of view, that makes of this or that religious 
body a sect. It may be said, indeed, that any 
branch of the church becomes a sect when as 
a condition of fellowship it demands assent to 
a dogmatic statement, no matter what the form, 
or insists upon any peculiarity of practice, 
or upon the observance of any symbolic rite 
and thereby excludes from membership other 
equally earnest people who desire to follow 
Christ, and who are loyal to His spirit. 

The true church life that is slowly but surely 
rising up to take the place of the sects will 
be as comprehensive as the spirit of Christ. It 
will conserve the good of all the sects while 
avoiding the limitations of each. It will have 
the intellectual freedom of Unitarianism with- 
out its emotional poverty; the large hopeful- 
ness of Universalism without its insistance 
upon a single issue to the exclusion of other 



CHURCH AND SECT 7 

equally important claims; the warmth and 
devotion of Methodism without its disposition 
to over-emphasize a peculiar phase of emo- 
tional experience; the earnest zeal of the 
Baptists without their tendency to subordinate 
the Christian spirit to the practice of a sym- 
bolic rite; the calm dignity of Presbyterianism 
without its inability to unbend; the democratic 
idea of Congregationalism without the care- 
free methods and the impotence to which it so 
often leads ; the wonderful sagacity of Roman 
Catholicism without its disposition to ignore 
the intellectual claims ; and the sweet mysticism 
of Quakerism without its extreme distrust of 
all outward forms. In short, the good of all 
while avoiding the limitations of each. 

In the coming Church there will still be 
variety of individual preference and taste, and 
men will be left free to exercise the same. 
Christ gave no teaching in regard to millinery. 
He leaves each teacher to decide for himself 
whether he shall wear a long white robe or 
a short black one. He chose water as a symbol 
of the cleansing grace of God, but He ex- 
pressed no preference as to whether men should 
be baptized with much water or with little. If 
a man is benefited by fasting Friday and feast- 
ing Saturday, or if he is helped by the tink- 
ling of bells and the burning of incense, and 
finds that the perfumed clouds passing through 



8 THE COMING CREED 

the open windows and rising heavenward have 
become chariots that lift his aspirations to 
the skies, then such an one is left free to burn 
his incense or to tinkle his bells. What Christ 
insists upon is that his disciples shall keep 
the " unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." 
It may be said in brief that the belief of 
the coming church will be an instinct and a 
spirit of life and not merely a definition. Its 
fellowship will be that of faith, love and service. 
Its compulsion will be a judgment faculty 
in each man's soul, and not a dogma or a 
system. It will exist for help and cheer and 
not for external authority. Its forces will be 
precisely those that filled the first disciples, 
the forces of a great love, and an immortal 
hope. Its level will be the high possibilities 
of humanity. Its progress will be measured 
by that of the race. It will include all who 
seek truth and yearn for goodness, and it will 
shut out none except those who shut them- 
selves out from the truth they cannot see and 
the love they cannot feel. 



n 

THE MORAL QUALITY OF BELIEF 



" He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved, but he that disbelieveth shall be con- 

demned '" -Jesus. 

"When we have put our belief into our char- 
acter, into our deed of kindness, into our hero 
sacrifice, there will be no room for arguing. And 
what of our creed cannot be expressed in these 
ways, what of it remains as mere words untran- 
slatable into things, may well be left out. " 

— J. Brierly. 



THE MORAL QUALITY OF BELIEF 

There can be no doubt that Jesus put be- 
lief in the very forefront of His teaching. He 
began His ministry by urging men to believe, 
and in the upper room on the last night of 
His earthly life, the greatest word on His lips 
was the word " believe." " These things have 
I said unto you that you may believe." He 
was always looking for belief and there was 
no question that He asked with so much 
earnestness as the question, "Do you believe?" 
When he found belief in men He was greatly 
exalted and broke forth into exlaimations of 
joy, and on the other hand He was greatly 
saddened and hindered by the presence of unbe- 
lief. The New Testament statement relative 
to His ministry in Nazareth, that " He did 
not many works there because of their unbe- 
lief," is a pathetic revelation of his dependence 
upon an atmosphere of sympathy and respon- 
siveness, and when it was wanting His efforts 
were chilled and paralyzed. It was apparently 
the thought of Jesus that through belief man 
becomes possessed of a new principle of life 
in virtue of which he enters on a higher scale 
of being. He therefore entrusted to His 
disciples the principle of belief as the great 
secret that He had come to communicate, and 
He sent them forth into all the world to declare 

11 



12 THE COMING CREED 

the message that "he that believeth shall be 
saved, and he that believeth not shall be con- 
demned." 

Manifestly the first question to be asked is 
what Jesus meant by the use of this term, and 
this question is all the more urgent because 
of the evident confusion of many in respect to 
this great matter. That belief of some sort 
is all important, that it is the watchword of 
true religion, that it is the root of all Christian 
devotion and heroism, the followers of Christ 
are universally agreed, but when it comes to 
the question of what belief is they are by no 
means so clear. Other generations, in deal- 
ing with this conception were no less at sea 
than we are, and the result of their uncertainty 
as to what it means to believe has been to be- 
queath us an inheritance of misconceptions that 
constitutes, perhaps the chief difficulty of our 
problem. 

A great source of trouble has been an in- 
discriminate mixing together of matters which 
are scientific and historical with those which 
are purely moral and spiritual, and the failure 
to realize that it is in reference to the latter 
that Christ used the word " believe." The 
unfortunate outcome of this lack of discrimina- 
tion has been that Christian belief has become 
identified in many minds with views of nature 
and history, which belong to an immature and 



MORAL QUALITY OF BELIEF 13 

uncritical period of our development, and 
which have necessarily been discredited with 
the advance of the scientific spirit. 

It was the general failure at this point, until 
within comparatively recent years that opened 
the way for such attacks upon the Christian 
faith as were made by men like Thomas Paine, 
Robert Ingersoll and William Draper, who 
spread the idea far and wide that belief 
in the Christian sense is synonymous with 
credulity, that it will not bear the light, that 
if men are intelligent they cannot be devout, 
and that if they are devout they cannot be 
intelligent. It was this failure that opened 
the way also for such attacks as were made 
by Mr. Huxley, who selected certain miracles 
from the Bible, held them up to ridicule and 
sought to make them the test of the credibility 
of Christianity, and as were made more re- 
cently by Mr. Cotter Morrison, an English 
writer, who selected from the book of Genesis 
the story of the fall, and then declared that 
man has not fallen but risen, and that being 
so, the whole theory of redemption is disproved. 

That such attacks upon the Christian faith 
have helped to create a prejudice against it, 
that greatly hinders the advance of essential 
Christianity can hardly be called into question, 
and the fact that very many Christians are 
still confusing what is scientific and historical 



14 THE COMING CREED 

with what is purely moral and spiritual, and 
insisting in the name of belief upon views of 
nature and history which have been thoroughly 
discredited and disproved, is making it exceed- 
ingly difficult in many quarters to remove that 
prejudice. " We need for our time to have 
it made very clear what belief is and what it 
is not, to note the different forms of it and 
their value, and the mistaken conceptions of 
it that have come to us from other years." 

Turning to the teaching of Jesus it becomes 
evident upon the most casual inquiry that His 
insistence upon belief was by no means an ap- 
peal against reason. On the contrary the whole 
method of Jesus, as shown by the parables, the 
sermon on the mount, and all His recorded ut- 
terances, makes it clear that belief as conceived 
by Jesus is not the suppression of the reason, 
but its highest and divinest expression. Neither 
was His summons to believe an appeal against 
the truths of science and history. It is not, in- 
deed, in this sphere that the emphasis of his 
thought lies. Whether the fall of man was a fall 
up or a fall down, whether the miracles cited by 
Mr. Huxley ever really occurred or whether 
they did not occur, whether certain books of 
the Bible are of a single or a composite author- 
ship, and whether they are to be regarded as 
a fact or interpreted as fiction is for scientific 
research, and not for religious faith to decide. 



MORAL QUALITY OF BELIEF 15 

Whatever the ultimate verdict of science upon 
the matters belonging to its own sphere may 
be, it will have to be accepted as final, and 
what we need to realize is that it may be 
accepted with entire confidence that it will not 
jeopardize the real interests, ideals and aims 
of faith. 

The simple fact is that Jesus made His 
appeal to the moral and spiritual intuitions 
of men, and to the truth that is evident to 
the moral sense. The whole method of his 
teaching shows this. " The silences and omis- 
sions of Jesus," as some one has put it, " are 
truly remarkable," He never attempts to 
prove the existence of God, but simply takes 
God for granted. He offers no argument to 
show the reality of the soul, the unseen 
spiritual world, or the extension of human 
destiny beyond. He drew the picture of a 
publican at prayer, and that was His way of 
declaring the existence of the soul. He drew 
a picture of Dives and Lazarus and that was 
His way of declaring the immortal destinies of 
men, and their relation to an unseen world. 
Why did he not offer arguments in order to 
reinforce these great convictions? It was be- 
cause he realized that no argument would give 
them cogency. They are witnessed to by the 
moral and spiritual intuitions of the race, and 
it was to this witness that Jesus made His 
appeal. 



16 THE COMING CREED 

It is in this light that we are able to see 
what Jesus meant by belief. To His mind 
it was fidelity to the moral and spiritual intui- 
tions, and to the truth that is evident to the 
moral sense, and unbelief to Him was faithless- 
ness. By His own fidelity He discovered the 
path that leads to the heart of God and to 
the assurance of immortal worth. Having 
learned for Himself the secret of the gentle, 
generous, confident, and joyous life, He sum- 
moned every one to know and to share it with 
Him. It was not simply a venture of thought 
that He asked, but a venture of conduct, it 
was the choice and the direction of the life 
in a certain way. Merely to stand in the 
presence of Christ's goodness, and to think 
of His ideals is to be convinced of their ever- 
lasting worth, and to trust this conviction and 
to act upon it is what Christ meant by be- 
lief. The fundamental failure of our Chris- 
tianity lies in the fact that belief is construed 
simply as the assent of the intellect to certain 
ideas rather than the choice and direction of 
the life in a certain way. Men are willing to 
make the venture of thought but they are not 
willing to make the venture of conduct. It 
is not so difficult to persuade the average man 
that he has a soul, but it is often very difficult 
to persuade him to live as if he had a soul. 
This, however, and nothing less is what Christ 
meant by belief. 



MORAL QUALITY OF BELIEF 17 

" He that believeth shall be saved, and he 
that disbelieveth shall be condemned." It is 
not merely because of the decision of some 
arbitrary tribunal that this is so, it is the 
verdict of all human experience. He who be- 
lieves in high things in the sense of respond- 
ing to them and basing his conduct upon them 
is saved from the tyranny of low things. He 
who believes in the spiritual and eternal is 
saved from the degradation of the material 
and the temporal. " He that disbelieveth is 
condemned." He condemns himself at the bar 
of his own higher nature; by consigning him- 
self to a low, poor, mean, starved, and perhaps 
wicked life, and this is faithlessness. 

If we take, for example, the vision of God 
that Jesus brought, how evident it is that the 
man who believes in that in the sense of re- 
sponding to it and making it the governing 
principle of his life, is saved. He is saved 
from selfishness because Jesus said, " God is 
love," and for man to believe in God is for 
him to become love also; he is saved from 
wickedness, because Jesus said, " God is 
righteous," and for man to believe in God is 
for him to become righteous also; it is to be 
saved from impurity, because Jesus said, " God 
is pure," and for man to believe in God is for 
him to become pure also ; and he is saved from 
resentment and injustice, because Jesus said, 



18 THE COMING CREED 

" God is forgiving," and for man to believe in 
God is for him also to become forgiving. 

If we take once more the vision of the soul 
that Jesus brought, how evident it is that he 
who believes in that is saved. He is saved 
from materialism which is our greatest foe, 
because he "lives not after the flesh but after 
the spirit;' 5 he is saved from the evil that stul- 
tifies life by the awakening of a true self -rever- 
ence; and he is saved from the fear of the 
grave through the experience of an immortal 
life on this side of the grave. 

" Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief." 
That is a prayer for moral and spiritual faith- 
fulness. Many a man has need to realize that 
opinions which command only the consent of 
the intellect amount to little, and no one has 
a right to call himself a Christian simply be- 
cause of these. " I am sick of opinions," said 
John Wesley, " I am weary to bear them ; my 
soul loathes the frothy food. Give me solid 
substantial religion; give me a humble, gentle 
lover of God and man, a man full of mercy 
and good faith, a man laying himself out in 
the work of faith, the patience of hope, the 
labor of love. Let my soul be with those 
Christians wheresoever they be, and whatso- 
ever opinions they are of." The belief en- 
joined by Christ makes its appeal to the whole 
nature, it means faithfulness, and no man needs 



MORAL QUALITY OF BELIEF 19 

to be told when he has been faithless. He that 
believeth shall be saved and the church or 
people who believe shall be saved. He that 
believeth not shall be condemned. He con- 
demns himself by consigning himself to a low 
and unworthy life when he might have life 
above measure. 



Ill 

GOD AS INFINITE AND UNFADLING 
LOVE 



" God is love ; and he that abideth in love abi- 
deth in God, and God abideth in him. " 

— John. 

" The career open to love is infinite. It is the 
life of the Father, which each conscious child of 
his is permitted to share. No proof less than 
the actual experience of this life of love could 
reveal God to any man. Yet every man who has 
this experience is as sure of divine life in the 
world as he is of his own existence. The filial 
experience has made the Father manifest. " 

— President Hyde. 



GOD AS INFINITE AND UNFAILING 
LOVE 

The average man has not yet begun to grasp 
the all important fact that the conception of 
God is for us a continual growth in conscious- 
ness. In recent years the idea of God has 
been carefully and painfully traced in its evolu- 
tion from the notion of primitive savages. It 
has been shown that at every stage of his 
development man has created his God in his 
own image, and this in not a few cases has 
been confidently offered as a refutation of 
theistic belief. A good many have accepted 
the reasoning, and have jumped to the con- 
clusion that the whole question has been closed, 
and that there is nothing more to be said. This 
process of reasoning, however, really proves 
that in every generation man's conception of 
God is just as great as he can grasp and 
nothing more. Our conception of the Infinite 
Reality must ever depend upon our organ of 
vision and understanding. 

It is at this point that the creeds of other 
years most conspicuously failed. They did 
not reckon upon the growth of human nature 
and the deepening of human insight. Con- 
ceiving God in terms of their own limitations 
and figuring Him and His universe by the 
institutions which they themselves had created, 

23 



24 THE COMING CREED 

the men of other generations represented God 
as a king and pictured His sovereignty as that 
of a celestial Mikado or an infinite Caesar. 
Such a conception very naturally gave rise 
to ideas which are repellant to the more sen- 
sitive feelings of men today, but which ap- 
peared very natural even to the most cultivated 
people in the age when they orginated. Take, 
for example, the idea not infrequently advanced 
by religious teaching until within compara- 
tively recent years, that God was pleased with 
the sufferings of people, that He had created 
some for the express purpose of visiting his 
wrath upon them in endless and cruel torture. 
Take, also, the idea that God was under no 
obligation to do anything for the salvation 
of sinners. It is only very gradually that 
these crude and limited ideas have been dis- 
pelled, because it is only thus that a human 
consciousness that is able to conceive of God 
in other and higher terms has been evolved. 
In the light of this self-evincing fact that 
human nature is yet in the making, "that it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be," and 
that the God consciousness of men in every age 
is the measure of their growth, the folly and 
the futility of trying to cling to the statements 
of faith that were cast in other years, and 
of trying to make them the test of faith today, 
should be apparent to every discerning mind. 



GOD AS LOVE 25 

The conviction that at the heart of things 
is an Infinite and Unfailing Love, that all 
history, all men, and all times are in the hands 
of such a Love, has come to be the chief postu- 
late of intelligent religious thinking and teach- 
ing, and without doubt it will be the funda- 
mental postulate of the coming creed. It is 
true that the conviction of an Infinite Love is 
the very essence of the new Testament evangel, 
that it is central in Christ's doctrine of the 
Father, and that it runs through the teach- 
ings of Apostolic Christianity. It is true, also, 
that as a minor note it has found expression 
all through the years. We have need, how- 
ever, to observe at this point that the manifest 
enlargement of the human spirit that is com- 
ing today is giving to this great conception 
all the force of a new revelation. When it 
is called to mind that the men who wrote the 
theological systems of other years, in which 
God is pictured with the sentiments of a me- 
diaeval baron, were also readers of the New 
Testament, and that they were sincere and 
devoted, the only way to account for their 
failure to grasp this great central truth of 
early Christianity is that their eyes were holden, 
there was some defect in their organ of vision, 
the mind was limited to inherited conceptions 
that had to be outgrown. It is the height, 
therefore, to which the religious mind of to- 



26 THE COMING CREED 

day has risen that makes the God of the Middle 
Ages impossible. We have come to realize that 
energy is not of itself God, nor indeed the 
greater part of Him. With the growth of 
the spiritual consciousness has come the in- 
sight that ethical reality is greater than mere 
power, that right transcends might, that grace 
is superior to force, that love is the supreme 
strength. 

To some minds the calamities, misfortunes, 
inequalities and miseries of life offer serious 
objections that stand in the way of belief in 
God as Infinite Love. To such minds the 
falling towers that crush, the floods and vol- 
canic eruptions that destroy, and the cruel 
men that kill are the convincing proof of the 
supremacy of blind and heartless force. Nor 
is it easy to answer this objection in a way 
that is convincing to the objector himself, for 
the simple but very obvious reason that the 
great argument for the supremacy of Infinite 
Love is an insight rather than a process of 
logic. The intellect is indeed a proof of God, 
but it is our poorest proof. " It is when we 
love, suffer, labor, serve, and forgive that we 
are surest of God, since we know Him in these 
things as our other higher part." Men who 
have themselves risen to the plane of true, 
pure love, and have felt in their own hearts 
the rising tide of sympathy that " makes the 



GOD AS LOVE 27 

whole world kin," experience but very little 
difficulty in believing in the Infinite Love, that 
the mysteries of the outer world are mysteries 
of goodness and not of evil, " that all things 
work for good to them that are called accord- 
ing to His purpose." It is from the emotional 
and moral riches of his own nature that man 
draws his chief insight into the character of 
God. 

Another objection that is frequently made 
to the belief in God as Infinite Love, is that 
in thus representing Him we are simply pro- 
jecting on the sky an image of ourselves, and 
setting up as an object of worship a gigantic 
man of our own creation. This objection, how- 
ever, is by no means as serious as many have 
thought. We cannot imagine a single ray of 
light as self-existent, but only as a revelation 
of that fountain of splendor from which it 
came. So it is with the mind, heart and will 
of man. A single ray of intelligence suggests 
an Infinite Mind; a single volition suggests 
an Infinite Will; and one throb of affection 
tells us that somewhere and somehow love is 
measureless and eternal. In other words, that 
which is imperfect in man proves the existence 
of perfection somewhere, and that which is 
limited in man proves the existence somewhere 
of the unlimited. The cause must be adequate 
to explain the effect. We cannot believe that 



28 THE COMING CREED 

blind force is sufficient to explain the existence 
of love. It takes a soul to touch a soul. It 
requires love to evoke love. 

It is true that in speaking of God as love 
personality is presupposed, but that does not 
necessarily imply that God is limited and loca- 
lized. We cannot measure the Infinite Being 
by our limitations. The personality that 
reaches down to the plane of the human con- 
sciousness is no more limited by that contact 
than is the ocean by the petty island around 
which its waves sweep. To say that God is a 
person is merely to assert that He is intelli- 
gence and will, essentially such as we know in 
ourselves, but related to such qualities in man 
somewhat as the universal atmosphere is re- 
lated to a single breath. We can best think 
of God perhaps as the spirit that pervades the 
universe as our own spirit pervades the body, 
so that He is manifested in every part, though 
not identical with any part. He uses the uni- 
verse as the spirit uses the body, but He is 
independent of it, and transcends it as the 
spirit is independent of and transcends the body. 

Still another objection to the presentation 
of God as love comes from the side of religious 
belief and is offered, as is supposed, in the 
interest of a more wholesome and invigorating 
faith. It is said that the emphasis of this 
idea leads those who accept it to think lightly 



GOD AS LOVE 29 

of the demands of righteousness, and of the 
restraints of law, and that the very founda- 
tions of morality are thereby undermined. It 
is no doubt true that in the widespread re- 
action that has come against a view of the 
Deity that represented Him as an Oriental 
monarch, jealous of personal honor, and deter- 
mined to vindicate it with blood, there is a 
tendency to reduce the character of God to an 
easy-going good nature, and to think of Him 
as too kind to punish. It is only natural 
that the reaction from the harsh and arbitrary 
views of God, which were once held should lead 
many to an opposite extreme, but the remedy 
for this evil is not a return to the rigid and 
repellent views that have been outgrown. It 
is a proper enforcement of the true meaning 
of love as a word that stands for the moral 
completeness of God, including His holiness 
as well as His mercy, and His justice as well 
as His kindness. It is an undue narrowing of 
the idea of love that leads to the fear that 
the holiness of God will be lost to us, if we 
maintain in its fullest and largest meaning the 
truth that God is love. What we have to 
realize is that love describes the moral char- 
acter of God, and that it is not necessary for 
Him to surrender His holiness in order to 
be kind. His love finds expression in His 
justice as truly as in His forgiveness, and in 



30 THE COMING CREED 

the exercise of His discipline as truly as in 
the exercise of His grace. 

The coming creed, unlike the creeds of other 
years, will stand for the very highest con- 
ceivable ideal of God, and that is that, " God 
is love." The height to which the human soul 
has risen will permit of no other conception 
of Him. For the Church to insist upon any 
lower ideal can only end in disaster. The 
coming creed will recognize that God is greater 
than our hearts or thoughts, or than the sun 
of all the conceivable perfections that we 
ascribe to Him, and its doctrine of love will 
include them all. It will recognize that love 
as applied to God cannot be warped or 
narrowed down, that God is pouring His love 
upon us in order to bring us into sympathy 
and fellowship of life with Himself, and into 
His own moral likeness, that love is the sum 
of all goodness, and he that " dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God and God in him." 



IV 

JESUS, THE SUPREME REVELATION 
OF DIVINE AND HUMAN LOVE 



But Thee, but thee, O sovereign Seer of time, 
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, 
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best 

Love, 
O perfect life in perfect labor writ, 
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, — 
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what 

lapse, 
What least defect or shadow of defect, 
What rumor tattled by an enemy, 
Of inference loose, what lack of grace 
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, 
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ." 

— Sidney Lanier. 



JESUS, THE SUPREME REVELATION 
OF DIVINE AND HUMAN LOVE 

Starting with the New Testament period, 
what transformations do we behold in the 
Church's thought of Jesus ! As we pass from 
the first to the second century we find our- 
selves amidst the strange, and to this age 
rather unaccountable phantasies of Gnosticism. 
The person of Jesus is here represented simply 
as a link of the interminable chain of shadowy 
beings conjured up by the fevered Eastern 
imagination. As we study them on the pages 
of the early writers, the brain reels and we 
become lost in the maze of gigantic unrealities. 
Next comes the Christ who was conceived by 
the Platonized minds and the bewildering 
speculations that gather about the logos 
doctrine. Later comes the Christ of the Greek 
metaphysics and the homousian and the homo- 
eousian doctrines. Still later as we approach 
the Dark Ages we realize that the historic 
Jesus has receded still farther from the view 
of men, the compassionate Son of Man has 
yielded place to a stern and terrible being 
whose wrath has to be turned aside by the 
supplication of the Virgin Mother. He is a 
sinewy athlete, whose gianthood is matched 
against feeble sinners in order to sweep them 
into the fiery furnace, amidst the plaudits of 

33 



34 THE COMING CREED 

admiring saints, or as a mighty smith whose 
office is to forge fetters for the sinner rather 
than to set the prisoner free. There was in 
fact a considerable period when the historic 
Jesus seemed all but obliterated from the 
popular mind. Since the Reformation, the 
speculations that gather about the person of 
Jesus, which for the most part have their origin 
in the older creeds, are far too numerous to 
mention. 

In view of the transcendent influence of 
Jesus it is scarcely to be wondered at that the 
problem of His person has attracted such at- 
tention, and that in every generation men have 
striven with such earnestness to frame a defini- 
tion of Him that will fit in with their philoso- 
phical systems. Such efforts have not been 
without value, but the conviction is growing 
that the person of Jesus is greater than all 
our systems and that it is not possible to frame 
a definition that will adequately represent Him. 

" Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be, 

They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And Thou, Oh Lord, art more than they. " 

The psychological interest of recent years is 
bringing us to realize that all personality is 
a mystery. We cannot even define our own 
personality. We know that we are related in 



JESUS 35 

some way to the Infinite Reality, but just 
how, is a matter that we find it very difficult 
to express. We say that we are human and 
that Christ was divine, but where the divine 
begins and the human leaves off is a problem 
that confounds even the greatest intellects. 
That Christ shared our nature to the fullest, 
that He was all that we are and something 
more we may confidently believe, but until 
human nature itself is better understood, and 
until we comprehend more fully how all finite 
life is related to God, we cannot have an 
explanation of the person of Jesus that will be 
conclusive or satisfactory. It is not, in fact, 
essential that we should have such a definition. 
The speculative interest in the person of Jesus, 
however important, is only secondary. If the 
worth of what Jesus offers to humanity is 
made to depend upon certainty at this point, 
it is evident that it means the death of faith 
to an ever increasing number of people. 

Turning to the New Testament it soon be- 
comes evident that the speculative interest in 
the person of Jesus, that is so prominent in 
history, is by no means uppermost in the minds 
of these early writers. It is true that there 
are some traces here, notably in the Gospel 
of John, the Epistles of Paul and iii the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, of the speculative interest that 
had even then begun, but that which concerned 



36 THE COMING CREED 

the first disciples most, and which they were 
most eager to communicate was the new vision 
of love that had been opened to them by their 
contact with Jesus, and the incomparable 
spiritual reinforcement that He had brought 
to them. They felt that they had tasted the 
purest joy that a human soul can know, which 
is contact with a perfect love. The portrait 
of Jesus drawn in the New Testament is that 
of one whose spirit is devoid of all selfishness, 
and whose every motive was inspired by love. 
It is the portrait of one who was so convinced 
that love is the master law of life that He 
dared to base His conduct wholly upon it, 
and to accept cheerfully all the risks that 
were implied. In His refusal to make use of 
His abilities for private ends, which has been 
the common principle of social life since society 
began; in the wealth of service that He poured 
out upon inferior persons who did not com- 
prehend a tithe of what He said or did; in 
His willingness to admit to His intimacy all 
who would come to Him and His refusal to 
discriminate in His friendships ; in His patience 
with those who mistook His spirit and who 
libeled His character; in His suffering of in- 
jury without retaliation, and His willingness 
to forgive until seventy times seven; and in 
a hundred similar ways we have the evidence 
that He considered love the only thing worth 



JESUS 37 

living for, and upon it he based His life. The 
portrait of Jesus in the Gospels is that of 
one who " offered himself everywhere without 
expectation of return, who lent himself freely, 
hoping for nothing in payment." 

It was in the perfect love that was radiated 
by Jesus, kindling their own hearts to love 
and filling them with an unspeakable joy, that 
the first disciples found the divinity of their 
Master and His eternal gift. They felt in- 
stinctively that the perfect love of Jesus was 
the outshining of on Infinite Love that is at 
the heart of things, and in trying to express 
this fact, they almost exhausted the vocabulary 
of their age. They called Him "the impress" 
or the " image of God," " the first born" or 
"only begotten son of God," " the out-shin- 
ing of the divine majesty," "the word," "the 
self-expression," " the uttered reason of God ;" 
and they declared that He was filled with "all 
the fullness of God." They did not invent 
these terms, they took them from the current 
Jewish and Alexandrien thought of the times, 
but they gave to them a new meaning and 
filled them with a new divine significance. 

It is evident also that the conviction of the 
disciples that the perfect love of Jesus was 
the outshining of the Infinite Love was in 
harmony with the Master's own consciousness. 
It was in the love that welled up in his own 



38 THE COMING CREED 

soul that Jesus found the surety of the Father's 
love, and knew himself to be one in spirit, 
sympathy and intention with the Father. It 
is an interesting fact that Jesus never offered 
any proof of God, other than his own con- 
viction, and that of those to whom he addressed 
Himself, and He never offered any proof of 
God's love, except to draw the picture of the 
waiting Father in the parable. It was pri- 
marily in His own experience that Jesus found 
His evidence of God. Looking out upon 
nature and human life He saw in the beauty 
of the lillies, the color of the grass, the feed- 
ing of the sparrows, the rain and sunshine 
falling upon the just and the unjust, the 
providence that watches over the unthankful 
and the evil, the faithful shepherd caring for 
his sheep, the good Samaritan nursing the 
wounded stranger, the kind father giving good 
gifts to his children, and welcoming with robe, 
ring, feast and dance the returning prodigal, 
a great beneficence working itself out on a 
universal scale that was kindred to his own 
experience, and with which he felt himself in 
accord. He spoke of this Infinite Beneficence 
by the tender human name of Father, He 
offered Himself as the revelation of the Father, 
and told His disciples that if they knew Him 
and understood His motives and character, 
they would know the Father. " He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father." 



JESUS 39 

The coming creed will return to the self- 
consciousness of Jesus, and for the mere specu- 
lative interest in His person that has over- 
shadowed Christian teaching it will substitute 
a moral interest. In place of the metaphysi- 
cal sonship of the dogmas it will put the ethical 
sonship of the Gospels. In the perfect love 
of Jesus it will find the supreme revelation 
of the Infinite Love. It will recognize, as the 
theories of other years utterly failed to re- 
cognize, that Jesus translated into terms of 
human personality the very essence of the 
nature of God. Since He lived there is no 
longer need that we should discover each for 
himself the scattered evidence of Divine Love. 
They are brought to a focus in His character 
and therefore the knowledge of God can be at- 
tained most easily and completely through 
His reflection in Jesus. 

In the coming creed, the perfect love of 
Jesus will also be recognized as the highest 
expression of human love, and as the supreme 
ideal for all who through Him learn to love. 
In teaching His disciples, to put themselves 
into the same filial relation to God as He did, 
Jesus revealed His desire to give to all the 
weary and the burdened that which He had 
within Himself, to share with them the riches 
of His own inner life, to help them experience 
what He experienced, and to love as He loved, 



40 THE COMING CREED 

without condition or reserve. Hence the true 
disciple of Jesus is the person who is learn- 
ing that love is the only thing worth living 
for, and through the practice of love is enter- 
ing into the riches of the life of God. The 
church that Jesus founded is a confraternity 
of those who are learning to love as He loved, 
and the society that He designated as the 
kingdom of God is a society permeated by His 
spirit and bringing all the affairs of life to 
the test of His love. " It was as a bridegroom 
that Jesus came, anointed with all the perfumes 
of a dedicated love, and until the last bitter 
hour of His rejection He moved with such 
lyric joyousness across the earth that life be- 
came festive in his presence. It is as a bride 
that the church exists upon earth, and if no 
festive smiles are awakened by His presence 
and no gracious unsealing of the fount of love 
in human hearts, then it is not His church, for 
He has passed elsewhere with another company 
to the marriage feast." 



SALVATION AS A CHARACTER OF 
LOVE 



" At the root of our conception of salvation 
lies the idea of God as essentially self-imparting. 
To Christian faith God is not simply the sover- 
eign who commands, but the Father who loves, 
and who, because He loves, gives. Between Him 
and His human child there exists a kinship, which 
even sin cannot completely obscure, and which 
makes possible the divine indwelling in humanity. 
— William Adams Brown. 



SALVATION AS A CHARACTER OF 
LOVE 

There is nothing that is so suggestive of 
the changes which have overtaken our religious 
life, and that of the society to which we be- 
long, as the significance we attach to certain 
words. The words themselves are the same, 
they stand in our vocabulary now just as they 
stood there centuries and ages ago, but new 
meanings have crept into them, old meanings 
have dropped out, and they have a very dif- 
ferent effect upon us from that which they 
had upon the men of other years. 

The statement applies to our religious 
phraseology as a whole, but to none of it with 
greater force than to the word with which we 
have here especially to deal. The word sal- 
vation has been all through history an integral 
and vital part of religion's vocabulary, but 
does it mean now the same that it meant in 
other generations? Does the effect that the 
word produces upon us correspond to that 
which it produced upon our fathers? Does 
it mean more or less to us than it meant to 
them? Does our conception of it represent an 
increase or a decrease of spiritual insight. 

In the early stages of history the mental 
outlook of man was necessarily very different 
from what it is today. The forces of nature 

43 



44 THE COMING CREED 

were not understood, and the operation of 
natural causes was undiscovered. When such 
causes were not recognized it was the universal 
law of the primitive mind to attribute events 
of every kind to the action of wills like its 
own. Thus there grew in the early world a 
great fear that ruled men's actions, created 
much of their religion, and determined to a 
very considerable extent their idea of salva- 
tion. The primitive man in his ignorance felt 
that he was in the presence of an unknown and 
hostile power. The darkened sky, the 
thunder's roar, the lightning's gleam, the 
volcano's eruption, sickness, pain, and death 
appeared to him but the anger of some malig- 
nant personal agency. Hence to appease the 
wrath of the gods and to purchase their favor 
was a notion that figured prominently in the 
religion of early man and in his conception 
of salvation. By means of certain rites that 
were supposed to have a magical power, he 
endeavored to soothe the Deity, and by means 
of animal sacrifices he sought to obtain His 
favor. It is no doubt true that in all these 
sacrifices, even the rudest of them, there was 
an element of true religion. To the better 
minds they gradually came to mean an inter- 
course of giving and receiving between God 
and man, but at the outset, at least, this 
element had little if any recognition. Sacri- 



SALVATION 45 

fices were but the means of appeasing the 
wrath of the Deity and of insuring personal 
safety. 

This feeling, so characteristic of the early 
mind, that the universe is hostile, that we are 
beset by a malignant power, has clung to men 
with great persistence, and we have not yet 
wholly succeeded in freeing ourselves from it. 
" In the subconscious regions of the soul, the 
past still lingers to persuade us that ours is 
a demon-haunted world, where, instead of God, 
the Devil rules." It is not therefore surpris- 
ing that religion, through all the centuries, 
has been colored with the notion that salva- 
tion is escape from God's displeasure and from 
the torment that his wrath has prepared. 

The theories of atonement, for example, that 
have been given such prominence in Christian 
teaching, that represented man as utterly cut 
off from God and from the life of heaven be- 
cause of sin, and as being able to find escape 
only because the Son of God in pure mercy suf- 
fered an equivalent for what man should have 
suffered, thereby paying man's debt and making 
possible his escape from God's wrath, had some- 
thing, manifestly, of this primitive conception 
of God at its background. The idea of church 
membership also, that found expression in the 
dictum, — " Outside the church is no salvation," 
was built upon this conception of the primitive 



46 THE COMING CREED 

mind. It is said of the author of " Lead, Kindly 
Light, 95 that when upon the verge of turning 
from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic 
Church, the question that bothered him most 
was whether, in case he should die in his earlier 
faith, he would be saved. That Newman was 
sincere in his questionings we cannot doubt, and 
yet we are filled with wonder that he could hold 
to a view of God that conceived Him capable 
of damning a man to eternal torment upon the 
score of the difference that exists between two 
branches of the Church. 

The change in our conception of salvation 
from that which was held in other years results 
from the fact that we have come into a new 
state of mind concerning the Unseen. We have 
begun at last to be convinced that God is not 
malevolent; that we have not to escape from 
Him or to purchase His favor; that "He is 
the spirit of love, brooding alike over the right- 
eous and the unrighteous"; that the chief end 
of life is to allow ourselves in childlike trust to 
be ruled to the uttermost by that same spirit of 
love; that salvation means first and last the 
union of our poor self with a greater and bet- 
ter self, a finding of that Highest, "whose wit- 
ness has ever been in us, and who has been un- 
ceasingly our refuge and strength!" 

Coming directly to the heart of the matter, 
it may be said that for us salvation means es- 



SALVATION 47 

cape from self rather than from God. It means, 
to begin with, escape from ignorance into truth. 
We have begun to realize that the evils which 
crush us are exceedingly varied; they are phy- 
sical, mental, moral, social, and to a very con- 
siderable extent they are the result of ignor- 
ance. We must know the laws of body in order 
that we may be well, and the laws of mind in 
order that we may avoid mistakes, and the laws 
of character that we may have moral soundness, 
and the laws of social life that we may dwell 
together sweetly, helpfully and peaceably. The 
discovery of knowledge along all these lines is 
what is meant by truth, and salvation is escape 
from ignorance into truth. 

It is also escape from unrighteousness into 
right. We have come to realize that men have 
to be right in order to be safe ; that salvation is 
rightness toward God and His laws, and that 
there is no substitute for this attitude. If an 
instrument is out of tune it must be made right, 
according to its laws, before it will produce 
melodious sounds, and there is no possible cere- 
mony that can be performed over it that will 
dispense with this requirement. What is true 
of the instrument is also true of ourselves. 
Men in large numbers have begun to perceive 
at last that to be saved is to become right ; that 
religious forms and symbols have worth only to 
the extent that they help toward this end, and 



48 THE COMING CREED 

that when it is attained all laws and forces are 
servants, ministering to our needs in the most 
tender and wonderful ways, and the universe in 
all of its operations is a friend. 

It is merely putting this matter in another 
and in a higher form, to remark that salvation 
is escape from selfishness into love. The deep- 
est word about salvation that was ever uttered 
is the New Testament statement that " Every 
one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth 
God. He that loveth not knoweth not God ; for 
God is love." The selfish theories of salvation 
which have allowed men to become absorbed in 
the thought of saving their own soul while 
treating other souls with neglect, have had their 
origin in a wrong conception of the character 
of God, and of the spirit of Christ's ministry. 
" Do I love the Lord or no, am I saved or am 
I not," may be the crude expression of a real 
religious experience, but it does not express the 
Christian idea of salvation. The coming creed 
will recognize, as the creeds of other years have 
failed to recognize, that we cannot have salva- 
tion independently of our fellows ; that he who 
would take it on such terms is not worthy of it, 
and is not capable of receiving it ; that he alone 
whose spirit is so wrapped up in the welfare of 
others that he would rather suffer with them 
than to know the bliss of heaven without them 
ever really discovers the secret of salvation, 
either in this world or in the hereafter. 



SALVATION 49 

The greatest force under God to bring us 
into the character of love, which is salvation, is 
the message and spirit of Jesus. It has been 
urged by not a few in recent years that the love 
of God is self -evincing ; that it needs no proof ; 
that it is written both over nature and in the. 
thoughts of man that God is immanent in His 
world, and that He wells up in the hearts of 
His children. It must be remembered, however, 
that it is the Christian who has discovered that 
the love of God wells up in human souls, and 
those who are most deeply conscious of the im- 
manent love of God are those who have come 
most closely to the teaching and spirit of Jesus. 

The love of Jesus is truly the most wonderful 
revelation of the heart of God that earth has 
ever witnessed, and hence it is the greatest force 
under God to bring men into the character of 
love. His love was not only constant and un- 
failing, sympathetic and comforting, but it pos- 
sessed a peculiar quality as well. It was re- 
demptive; it transformed its objects; it raised 
them into a new Divine character. 

The love of Jesus! So vast was that love 
that He craved the whole world of His brothers 
and sisters to love, and God gave Him the 
world. Salvation! What is it but to escape 
out of ignorance, unrighteousness and selfish- 
ness, into a character that is like that of Jesus. 
It is not enough that we should talk about that 



50 THE COMING CREED 

love, or that we should love Him simply for His 
love to us. We must learn from Him to love as 
He loved, manifesting the same gracious spirit 
in word and deed, forbearance and forgiveness, 
in consecration and service. 

So tender was His love to us 

We had not learned to love before, 

That we grow like to Him, and thus 

Men sought His grace in us once more." 



VI 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS THE SWAY 
OF LOVE 



" What then is the service rendered to the 
world by Christianity ? The proclamation of 
"good news." And what is this good news? The 
pardon of sin. The God of holiness loving the 
world and reconciling it to himself in Jesus, in 
order to establish the Kingdom of God, the city 
of souls, the life of heaven upon earth. There 
you have the whole of it; but in this is a revolu- 

tion - " -Amiel. 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS THE SWAY 
OF LOVE 

One of the words most frequently upon the 
lips of Jesus was the word kingdom. It was 
the keynote of His most important teachings,. 
In the first three Gospels, which probably repre- 
sent most nearly the Master's point of view, 
the allusions to the " kingdom of God " or the 
" kingdom of heaven " find constant repetition. 
It is said that Jesus began His ministry by de- 
claring that the " kingdom of God is at hand," 
and He is reported to have traveled throughout 
the villages and cities of Palestine preaching 
the good news of the kingdom. His parables, 
which are the pictures of the New Testament, 
were spoken largely for the purpose of illus- 
trating the spirit of the kingdom. The word 
evidently was intended to signify a corporate 
union of individuals such as is covered by our 
word society. There was no other word at that 
time which so well expressed the idea that He 
wished to convey. He might with equal accu- 
racy have spoken of the republic or the com- 
monwealth of God. The word kingdom is 
used because there was no other idea of society 
that was current among those whom He ad- 
dressed. 

The importance which He attached to the 
idea is shown by the fact that He urged His 

53 



54 THE COMING CREED 

disciples to seek first the " kingdom of God." 
There is perhaps no other point at which 
Christian teaching has so signally failed as in 
the way it has dealt with this fundamental 
truth of the Christian message. It is hardly 
too much to claim that the greatest triumph 
of the coming creed will be the rediscovery and 
reinterpretation of the mind of Christ in refer- 
ence to the " kingdom of God." 

We have to observe at the outset how this 
teaching of Jesus has been understood by His 
disciples, and how it has been represented by 
the church. For centuries after the death of 
Jesus the chief thought of His disciples was 
that He would come again in a visible way and 
with power, and that by miracle He would de- 
stroy the unbelieving world and establish the 
kingdom of God. The " day of the Lord " 
when Christ would appear in the clouds to con- 
found and to overthrow the unbelieving world, 
and to inaugurate the kingdom was the great 
note of early Christian expectation. However, 
as the long centuries wore themselves out and 
this hope was not realized another idea began 
to emerge and to find a place in Christian 
thought. It was the idea that the main busi- 
ness of the church is to get men ready to die, 
and to prepare them for the life of heaven. 
This thought gradually gathered force, and 
for centuries it has been uppermost in the 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 55 

Christian mind. The organization and direc- 
tion of Christian activity have proceeded very 
largely upon this assumption. The world has 
been esteemed a wreck and Christian service has 
had for its object to save as many as possible 
therefrom. 

That this "other worldliness" which has 
characterized the Christian body has issued in- 
directly in many good results to society can 
hardly be questioned. It has been a splendid 
protest against excessive devotion to this world, 
and it has been accompanied by tidal waves of 
sympathy which have done much to enrich hu- 
man lives in countless ways. The fact cannot 
be overlooked that Christian teaching, in spite 
of its extreme emphasis upon the life to come, 
has done much to alleviate the condition of the 
weak and unfortunate, to bestow honor upon 
womanhood, to bring safety to little children, 
to fill the hearts of men with trust, and to com- 
fort them in trouble, failure and misfortune. 
Yet in view of the social conditions that still 
prevail, even in the so-called Christian coun- 
tries, it is a fair question whether the failure 
of Christian teaching to properly interpret and 
emphasize Christ's ideal of the kingdom has 
not proved a serious hindrance to the work of 
social reclamation and reconstruction. 

That Christ was not thinking primarily of 
the life after death by his oft-repeated refer- 



56 THE COMING CREED 

ence to the "kingdom of God" or the "king- 
dom of heaven " is shown by His declarations 
that the " kingdom is at hand," and that it is 
here in the midst of the world. What He evi- 
dently meant thereby was the sway of God 
here and now. When He told the disciples that 
they were to seek the " kingdom of God," He 
meant that they were to seek the enthronement 
of God's truth and right. He meant that they 
were to seek the re-establishment of the social 
life upon a basis of mutual sympathy and ser- 
vice rather than upon a basis of self-interest; 
the creation of a brotherhood in which all men 
should be united in Godly fear, in brotherly 
hopes and aims, in the effort to convert society 
into a great fraternity, and to innoculate all 
human conditions with the spirit of good will. 

Love even your enemies, He said to the first 
disciples ; " bless them that curse you, do good 
to them that hate you, and pray for them that 
despitefully use you, and persecute you; that 
ye may be children of your Father which is in 
heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise upon 
the evil and the good, and sendeth His rain upon 
the just and the unjust." In other words, the 
great determining law of the kingdom is love. 
Not in the sense, perhaps, in which we often 
use the term, but in the sense of good will. This 
attitude toward others does not, of course, pre- 
clude the disciple from those personal intima- 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 57 

cies which constitute so much of life. Every 
man, for example, is not called upon to love his 
neighbor's child in the same way that he loves 
his own. What Christ really demands is that 
each one shall recognize his kinship with all 
the rest of the Father's children, and that he 
shall endeavor to do for each the real best, 
although it may not always be what his brother 
thinks is best, and wherever this is done the 
kingdom of God has come. 

It is commonly assumed that the great evil 
of life is sin, but that was not Christ's view. 
To Him the great evil is want of love. He 
reached down to the fundamental truth that 
sin at its bottom is selfishness, and that all the 
disturbing evils of the world spring from the 
same fundamental source. The cure that 
Christ offered for selfishness, and for Him there 
is no other cure, is love. 

To promote the sway of good will, and to re- 
organize the social order upon it, was the es- 
sential mission of Jesus. His method was to 
make disciples by talking with people, by im- 
pressing upon them His own spirit, and by 
sending them forth to make disciples of their 
fellows. Jesus reckoned upon the fact that 
goodness is contagious, that love tends to dif- 
fuse itself, and that men cannot possess it with- 
out imparting it. He knew that when men had 
come to share His spirit, and had felt the thrill 



58 THE COMING CREED 

of His love, they would do as He did, and that 
they would go to others with the message of 
life, and He trusted to this alone to establish 
at last the sway of love. 

There are not a few to-day to whom it seems 
that the Christian ideal has proved inadequate, 
but it is perhaps nearer the truth to say that it 
has not yet been put to the crucial test. To 
the complaint that as a force to redeem society 
Christianity has failed, it may fairly be an- 
swered that on the contrary it has never yet 
been tried. The failure of the Christian body 
to make the sway of love its great objective, 
and the substitution of institutionalism for the 
personal and vital methods of Jesus have un- 
doubtedly stood in the way of a thorough-going 
application of the Christian ideal. What is 
manifestly needed at the present moment is for 
each congregation of Christian disciples to be- 
gin in its own humble sphere and way to exalt 
the social ideals of Jesus, and to create the at- 
mosphere of the kingdom. Instead of seeking 
primarily to increase the size of the church roll, 
and to get people ready to die, the first effort 
of those who follow Jesus should be to create 
an atmosphere of good will, brotherly sympa- 
thy and mutual service. Love should be made 
the watchword of the Christian fellowship, and 
the relations of men in the Christian body 
should be made so kindly, so gracious, so free 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 59 

from harsh words and criticisms that the spirit 
of Jesus may find ever a more perfect channel 
of expression. 

That a great movement has set in that 
means the ultimate recovery of Christ's great 
ideal there can hardly be any doubt. It is shown 
by the constancy with which the Fatherly idea 
of God is being set forth to-day in nearly every 
branch of the Church, and by the consequent 
emphasis that is given, either consciously or 
unconsciously, to the principle of brotherhood. 

It is shown by the growing willingness on the 
part of Christian people to recognize that all 
who are working to make the world better are 
laborers with Christ in His work of salvation; 
that every movement for righteousness is a 
movement of God; that in making it possible 
for humanity to live better, by doing away with 
ignorance, sickness, intemperance, poverty and 
injustice, the Christ spirit is finding expression 
and the " kingdom " is being advanced. 

It is shown by the new missionary interest 
that has come to the Church, and especially by 
the motive that is so evidently inspiring that in- 
terest, the motive to bring home to the Father's 
house and love the children who do not know 
that they have a Father and have never heard 
of the inheritance that is waiting for them. 
Slowly but surely the point of view has changed. 
Instead of the idea that without the knowledge 



60 THE COMING CREED 

of the historic Jesus the heathen are forever 
lost unless the missionary is sent, there has 
come the feeling that the service of the weak and 
the ignorant is the duty that love owes, and the 
opportunity that love craves, and the result is 
a new missionary impulse that promises much 
for the " kingdom of God." 

Finally, in the growing appreciation of the 
fact that all who have caught the spirit of 
Jesus are missionaries, is shown the movement 
for the recovery of the Christian ideal. The 
feeling of responsibility for the conversion of 
individuals may not be as strong as it once was, 
but the consciousness of obligation to do some- 
thing to make the world better is growing day 
by day. More and more the conviction is find- 
ing expression that conditions must be created 
that will make it easy and natural for men to 
do right, conditions which will impel the 
thoughts and hearts of men to rise toward the 
highest things as the growing plant rises 
toward the sun. 



VII 
LOVE ATTESTED BY SACRIFICE 



" With the conception of God as one whose 
very nature it is to express himself in humanity, 
there is given a profounder conception of the 
atonement. The sufferings and death which were 
the inevitable result of Jesus' life of fidelity and 
love are seen to be the expression in humanity of 
that abiding pain which the sins of his children 
have ever caused the Divine Father. The cross 
of Calvary becomes at the same time the revela- 
tion of the heart of God. " 

— William Adams Brown. 



LOVE ATTESTED BY SACRIFICE 

That the death of Jesus is somehow related 
to the higher life of humanity and to the pur- 
pose of God in securing it has been the convic- 
tion of all the Christian generations, and of 
this generation no less than of previous ones. 
Beginning with the first disciples Christian 
teaching has found in the cross its most ab- 
sorbing theme. No one can read the New Tes- 
tament without the feeling that its central and 
most conspicuous fact is the cross. In the four 
Gospels over one-third of all the space is occu- 
pied with the story of the crucifixion. Many 
other interesting events of Christ's career are 
passed over with slight notice, a thousand dis- 
courses are never mentioned, but His death 
upon the cross is described with such fulness 
and variety of detail as to make it clear that in 
the minds of these writers it was regarded as 
of transcending importance. The letters, also, 
which make up the second half of the New Tes- 
tament are permeated with the pathos of the 
cross and with the thought of its everlasting 
import for the human race. Is it not very re- 
markable that an event which at the outset, at 
least in the minds of its participators, was re- 
garded merely as an execution and the carrying 
out of a legal sentence, in less than a generation 
should have come to be viewed with the utmost 

63 



64 THE COMING CREED 

reverence by a vast multitude, and that this 
feeling should have been transmitted without 
abatement from century to century and from 
age to age. 

The explanation of this marvel is to be found 
in the great underlying fact that in the death 
of Jesus there broke upon the understanding 
of men a truth that for ages had been strug- 
gling for recognition. It was the truth of an 
Infinite Love that suffers and gives itself for us. 
Through their own experience and the soul's 
inward workings a few choice souls had long 
since begun to feel that sacrifice is the condition 
of all human progress, and that somehow this 
element is rooted in the nature of things and in 
the heart of God. The sunlight falls upon the 
mountain peaks before it reaches the valleys. 
So likewise the illuminations of God are caught 
by the greater souls before they are manifest 
to the race at large. In the later history of 
Israel the conviction that vicarious sacrifice is 
the condition of human progress found beauti- 
ful expression, notably in the picture of the 
suffering servant of Jehovah, as depicted in the 
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah : " He was wound- 
ed for our transgressions; He was bruised for 
our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace 
was upon Him, and with His stripes we are 
healed." Whether the author of this splendid 
passage was referring to some individual, or 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 65 

to the suffering of the nation in captivity, or 
whether he was merely expressing an ideal, is 
not made clear. In any case it may be re- 
garded as a foregleam of Calvary and its inex- 
pressible light. This truth that the poets and 
seers had beheld in their visions, and which had 
been struggling for recognition, in the perfect 
consecration and self-giving of Jesus was fully 
vindicated, and its worth for the life of the soul 
was forever revealed. 

It is not implied that the devotion of Jesus 
was a conscious display of the sacrificial spirit 
in order that men would see it and be impressed 
by it, any more than the devotion of a mother 
to the interests of a disobedient child is such a 
display. It is not of the nature of self-effacing 
love to indulge in such calculating prudence. 
Love gives because it is its nature to do so, and 
because it esteems it supremely blessed to give. 
Such also was the spirit of Jesus. Rightly con- 
strued the New Testament affords no warrant 
for the idea that Jesus was actuated by any 
other motive than that of passionate yearning 
for human good, and His suffering and death 
were the offering that love freely and gladly 
made. 

Loving men supremely, and conscious that 
His love was rooted in the heart of God, and 
reflected the will of God, He consecrated Him- 
self absolutely to the work of revealing God to 



66 THE COMING CREED 

men, as He knew Him. He determined to es- 
tablish a kingdom of God based wholly upon 
love, and employing neither force nor fear for 
its support. He determined to magnify and 
enthrone in the hearts of men the holy require- 
ments of God, to teach them that it is vain to 
worship God with gifts and sacrifices while af- 
fronting Him with pride, selfishness and hate, 
to show men what God is that they might un- 
derstand what He requires, and to unveil to 
men their secret sins that they might be led to 
seek the Divine mercy. For these ends He pur- 
posed to live, and, if need be, to suffer; to la- 
bor, and, if need be, to die. The supposition 
that the death of Jesus upon the cross was the 
chief object of His whole mission upon the 
earth has no basis in the Master's own con- 
sciousness. His great object was to found the 
kingdom of God, and He gave His life in the 
effort to realize this end, because in the struggle 
to carry out His life plan He had to deal with 
conditions that could not otherwise be over- 
come. Such was the mind of Jesus with refer- 
ence to His life work. 

Here, then, is the real significance to hu- 
manity of the Cross of Christ. The cross in 
Christian thought does not stand for a piece of 
wood of some particular shape. It is a symbol 
of His sacrificial love. Here, too, is the real 
meaning of the atonement that Jesus wrought 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 67 

by the cross. It was never His thought that 
God had to be atoned into love. The teaching 
that represents the cross as in some way appeas- 
ing and placating the Divine wrath, thereby 
enabling God to be merciful, as He could not 
otherwise have been, is the clearest violation of 
the consciousness of Christ. To the thought 
of Jesus, God is everywhere and always the 
embodiment of tender love. What man of you 
having a hundred sheep, if he loses one, does 
not leave the ninety and nine and go after the 
one that is lost, and when he has found it he 
lays it on his shoulder and comes home rejoic- 
ing? That is a picture of God. What woman, 
if she has ten pieces of silver and loses one 
piece, will not light the candle and get a broom 
and sweep the house and search diligently until 
she has found it? That is a picture of God. 
A man has two sons, and one of them leaves the 
father's house and goes into a far country. He 
wastes his substance in riotous living, and at 
last, after many harships, he decides to re- 
turn home. While he is yet a great way off the 
father sees him, because his eyes have been fixed 
on the horizon all the while, and he goes forth 
to meet him, and falls upon his neck, kisses and 
welcomes him home. That is a picture of God. 
In the light of these teachings it is clear that to 
the mind of Jesus there was no need that God 
should be atoned into love. The great need was 
that God's love should be revealed. 



68 THE COMING CREED 

Knowing God, and feeling in His own soul 
the throb of Infinite Love, Jesus lived and died 
that He might reveal God; that all men might 
come to know God as He knew Him, and that 
they might share in the wealth of His own inner 
life. By His passionate devotion He tried to 
make real and living the compassionate love 
and holy requirements of God. His atoning 
work consisted not in doing something to ena- 
ble God to be merciful, as He could not other- 
wise have been, but in revealing and interpret- 
ing the heart of God. 

It can scarcely be doubted that the real signifi- 
cance and glory of the cross have been greatly 
obscured by the grotesque and impossible 
theories of it which have been so universally and 
persistently held, and which still linger in the 
thought and speech of Christian men. Think 
what it means that for nearly a thousand years 
the idea held its ground, and at times completely 
dominated the thought of the Church, that the 
death of Jesus was a ransom paid to the devil, 
and that the resurrection was a kind of a trick 
by which Satan was finally defrauded. Think 
what it means that for nearly a thousand years 
more the idea prevailed in some form that the 
death of Christ was to pay an exact equivalent 
in suffering for human guilt, and thus to sat- 
isfy the claims of God's justice, and offended 
honor. Indeed, it may be said that the theories 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 69 

of the cross that have followed each other 
through the centuries have for the most part 
been of a character to obscure and to nullify 
the very truth about God that Jesus gave His 
life to reveal. The doctrine of the cross, how- 
ever, is one thing and the religion of the cross 
is another. In spite of the theories there were 
many in every generation who caught the spirit 
of the cross and gave it beautiful expression in 
a devoted life of self -giving. It was these who 
kept the Church alive and who gave it whatever 
real power it has ever possessed. Yet how much 
it would have meant to the Church and to the 
cause of the higher life, if the spirit of the 
cross could have been coupled to a teaching that 
was adequate to express the truth that it repre- 
sents. 

It must be recognized that at best the inter- 
pretation of the cross is only an imperfect 
striving after a Divine mystery, but the coming 
creed will differ from the creeds of other years 
in that it will take its cue from the conscious- 
ness of Christ. It will interpret the cross as a 
revelation of the spirit of Him who lives and 
reigns at the heart of things, and it will see in 
every manifestation of sacrificial love the un- 
veiling of God. God was in Christ giving the 
law of life to the world. So, also, He is in the 
True Parent giving the law of life to the fam- 
ily; He is in the True Teacher giving the law 



70 THE COMING CREED 

of lif e to the pupil ; He is in the True Prophet 
giving the law of life to the community ; and He 
is in the generous devotion of all those whose 
lives are laid freely upon the altar of service, 
who are bearing heavy burdens, drudging at 
wearisome tasks, and enduring the strain that 
cuts into life with cruel strokes that others may 
live. 

" A picket frozen on duty, 

A mother starved for her brood, 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 

And Jesus on the rood, 
And millions who humble and nameless 

The straight hard pathway trod, 
Some call it consecration, 

And others call it God. " 

In brief, it may be said that the coming 
creed will stand for the truth that sacrifice is 
an eternal law of the spiritual life ; that its root 
is in the heart of God ; that its expression is the 
religious history of man; that starting in the 
lowest forms it reaches its supreme glory in the 
cross. It will stand for the truth, also, that in 
" drinking the bitter sweet of this cup the soul 
finds its uttermost self; that along this path is 
achieved all inner progress; that all the hero- 
isms of life draw from here their inspiration; 
that from this source flows the power that re- 
deems the world. 5 ' 



VIII 
LOVE AND IMMORTALITY 



" For Love is stronger than death. " 

— H. M. Alden. 

He who from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy cer- 
tain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 
Will lead my steps aright. " 

— Bryant. 



LOVE AND IMMORTALITY 

The most familiar and yet the most unfa- 
miliar fact of human experience is death. We 
all are agreed that we must die, but we are by 
no means agreed as to what death is. Multi- 
tudes in every generation who have lived their 
whole lives in the belief that death meant ex- 
tinction have had, perhaps, as next door neigh- 
bors those who have been entirely filled with the 
thought of an existence beyond. On the one 
hand, we have the infinitely mournful strains 
of an Omar Khayyam: 

" One thing is certain 

And the rest is lies. 
The flower that once is blown 
Forever dies. " 

And on the other hand we have the serene 
and beautiful faith of a Tennyson : 

"That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete. " 

In view of the tremendous evidence of the 
outward appearance it is not at all surprising 
that the attitude of many toward the life be- 
yond should be frankly negative. "As far as 

73 



74 THE COMING CREED 

we are able to take account of the soul it grows 
with the growth of the body, matures as the 
body matures, and decays as the body decays. 
Why then should we not say that it dies when 
the body dies? Life gives overwhelming evi- 
dence of the mutual dependence of body and 
mind. An injury to the brain will produce an 
entire change in the mental and the moral life. 
What then is more reasonable than to suppose 
that if the brain is not merely injured, but 
destroyed, the inner consciousness will be de- 
stroyed also?" There are very few who have 
not at times been influenced by such reflections, 
and in every generation many have been com- 
pletely overwhelmed by them. It is true indeed 
that this negative mood has lain heavily upon 
the modern world. Many cultured people in 
every land have come to feel that this life is all, 
or at least that the odds are very much against 
there being another. The tremendous breaking 
up of traditional beliefs which has character- 
ized this generation is responsible, to a very 
great extent, for this feeling. A wide-spread 
loss of faith in religious ideas once universally 
held has left the minds of men open to the as- 
sault of appearance, and the average man sees 
nothing to rebut it. 

To the evidence of appearance the New Tes- 
tament opposes not an argument but an expe- 
rience. Its answer to the doubt about the fu- 



LOVE AND IMMORTALITY 75 

ture is a summons to live the life immortal 
here and now. According to its ideal the dif- 
ference between the mortal and the immortal 
is not made by death, but by an inner quality 
of life. Jesus, when hanging apparently help- 
less upon the cross was just as immortal as when 
he arose from the grave. He had some inner 
quality that death could not grasp or hold, 
and the assurance of the New Testament is that 
those who share the Master's kind of life are 
deathless. The promise of the New Testa- 
ment is not that if we die we shall live again, 
but that if we live in Christ we shall never 
die. The teaching of the New Testament is 
that all life has its laws. The laws of the inner 
life are as real and as insistent as the laws of 
the outer life. Those who obey the laws of 
health have a right to health, and other things 
being equal they find health. Those, too, who 
obey the laws of the spirit have a right to spir- 
itual life, and they find spiritual life. They 
find it on this side of death no less truly than 
in the great beyond. In his life of perfect de- 
votion and self-giving, as well as in his teach- 
ing, Jesus revealed both the nature of spiritual 
obedience, and the quality of life that flows 
therefrom. To share with him his obedience, 
says the New Testament, is to share with him 
the fruits of obedience. To practice with him 
the life immortal is to have as he had the cer- 



76 THE COMING CREED 

tainty of immortality. To the rich man who 
came with the question, "What shall I do to in- 
herit eternal life?" Jesus replied, "Sell what- 
soever thou hast and give to the poor, and come 
take up the cross and follow me." Devote 
yourself, in other words, to love. Give your- 
self, your days, and your strength to the claims 
of love. That is the practice of immortality. 
Love is of God, it is rooted in the Infinite Heart. 
He who loves abides in God and God in him, 
and his life is as deathless as the life of God. 

Thus from the standpoint of the New Testa- 
ment immortality is not something that is be- 
stowed from without, as one man bestows a gift 
upon another; it is something, rather, that is 
developed from within. In modern engineering 
it has become a familiar feat to remove an old 
and outworn structure, such as a railroad 
bridge, without interfering in the least with the 
traffic or hindering the trains for a single hour. 
It is said that a few years ago a great building 
which was occupied by a daily paper was re- 
placed by a modern fire-proof structure with- 
out suspending a single issue of the journal. 
While the daily work of publication was going 
on, the walls of the new building were rising, 
constructed to endure. Little by little the old 
and unsubstantial gave place to the new and 
permanent. So it is with the life immortal. 
Here in the midst of the years, in the midst of 



LOVE AND IMMORTALITY 77 

life's occupations, pursuits and interests, while 
we work and play, while we rejoice and sorrow, 
little by little we may develop within ourselves 
the elements that endure. The body is always 
dying, it is ever in a process of decay, but by 
devotion to Christlike ideals and ends we may 
develop a quality within that is above time and 
change, that is not subject to a process of de- 
cay, and when at last the body is outworn it 
will be laid aside as we discard a garment. "If 
the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, 
we have a building from God, a house not made 
with hands, eternal in the heavens." The inner 
consciousness, however, the real self has not 
been changed; it has simply been transferred. 
"Just as the estuary is a part of the sea and 
leads out to the sea, and we sail through the 
land-locked portion of it by day, looking out 
upon the land that is visible on every side, and 
then we go to sleep and awake to find ourselves 
in the midst of the ocean, so the earthly life 
that is lived for love is but a part of the great 
eternal sea. Sailing along today we look out 
and behold the land on every side, and then we 
go to sleep and awake just as naturally as in 
the morning, and we find ourselves upon the 
boundless ocean." 

Such is the Christian view of death. Instead 
of the dread tyrant, which art has pictured as 
a hideous fiend who advances brandishing his 



78 THE COMING CREED 

ghastly spear, or as one of the Fates whose 
remorseless shears cut the threads of life, the 
New Testament pictures death as a servant, 
whose entrance upon the scene can be discerned, 
but whose departure when his work is done may 
be predicted. Curiously enough this view is re- 
ceiving wonderful confirmation today from the 
very quarter which in other years was supposed 
to supply the evidence for its refutation. The 
further observations of science, by demonstrat- 
ing the continuity of force have shattered the 
premises upon which the old materialistic argu- 
ments for the destruction of consciousness were 
based. If we can turn heat into motion, motion 
into electricity, and electricity into light, but 
can by no process reduce them to nothingness, 
what is there in the nature of things or in hu- 
man experience to justify the inference that 
character or soul force can meet with such a 
fate? The broad hint of science here is that 
spirit can be transmuted but that it cannot be 
destroyed. 

Likewise in showing the universal validity of 
instinct science has done much to confirm the 
Christian view of death. It has shown that 
instinct is everywhere the prophecy of nature. 
Through this wonderful power the young ani- 
mal is able to guard itself against a thousand 
dangers and to come at last to maturity. Each 
insect and bird carries with it some instinct 



LOVE AND IMMORTALITY 79 

that enables it to meet nature's need. The 
young lark following its instinct commits itself 
to the soft air and it finds itself borne up by 
the receiving medium. The robin following its 
migratory instinct reaches the sunny clime that 
was in this way foretold. So the poet defining 
death as the summons of a heaven-born in- 
stinct beautifully sings, 

" I go to prove my soul; 
I see my way as the birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, 
I ask not; but unless God sends His hail 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
In good time, His good time, I shall arrive. 
He guides me and the bird in His good time. " 

Is it credible that nature in dealing with the 
animal world has shown such skill, but that in 
dealing with man she is a bungler, or that the 
Infinite Creator whispers truth to wasps and 
spiders, but that in speaking to man He seeks 
to mislead? 

It may be said indeed that what science here 
offers, does not, after all, amount to much, 
and it would not if it stood alone, but it comes 
as a reinforcement of the New Testament con- 
viction that true character is stronger than 
death, and that the development of inner worth 
is the safeguard against the power of death. 
It may be that on this side of the grave man 
will never gain a physical demonstration of 



80 THE COMING CREED 

what is beyond, but somehow the conviction is 
unavoidable that in his perfect devotion and 
self -giving Jesus revealed the secret of what lies 
beyond. It is impossible to come into contact 
with a really beautiful and noble personality 
without the feeling that it breathes the atmos- 
phere of immortality and is inexplicable with- 
out it, that while lived under human conditions 
it manifests relations to another and higher 
sphere, and that while absorbed in the interests 
and occupations of earth it nevertheless reveals 
an order of existence that is not of the earth. 
It was once said of a distinguished man who 
recently died that no one could think of his 
spirit, nature and career without thinking of 
immortality. That was pre-eminently the char- 
acteristic of Jesus. As men stood before him 
they felt the presence of something immortal 
that issued from him, and that was inherent in 
him. It is because of the life that he lived, 
more than the historical proof that is offered, 
that we believe in his resurrection. We cannot 
escape the conviction that such a life is beyond 
the reach of death. 

Those who live self-centered and self-satis- 
fied lives until forced by some bitter experience 
to think of death, are sometimes wont to ask 
for some book to read, or for some argument 
that will prove immortality, but we have to 
realize that immortality cannot be proved as a 



LOVE AND IMMORTALITY 81 

problem in mathematics is proved. "Life comes 
before belief just as the stars come before as- 
tronomy, the flowers before botany, and religion 
before theology. We must live the life immor- 
tal in order to believe in immortality. If we 
would have a right to the tree of life and if we 
would have a right to know that there is a tree 
of life, we must seek the immortal life here and 
seek it from the God who is here, and seek it 
through the channels that He opens for us." 

"Add to your faith virtue," says the New 
Testament, "and to virtue knowledge; and to 
knowledge temperance; and to temperance pa- 
tience ; and to patience brotherly kindness ; and 
to brotherly kindness love." That is the prac- 
tice of immortality, and it is from this that the 
sure conviction of immortality flows. 



IX 
A SUGGESTED CREED 



" Therefore, come what may, hold fast to love. 
We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. 
O, strive to enter into something of that large 
celestial charity which y meek, enduring, unretali- 
ating, and which even the overbearing world can- 
not withstand forever. Learn the first command- 
ment of the Son of God. Not to love merely, but 
to love as He loved. 

— F. W. Robertson. 



A SUGGESTED CREED 

We believe in God as the source of all love, 
in the sense that He wills the good of all, and 
that wherever love is there God is. 

We believe in Jesus as the supreme embodi- 
ment and revelation of love, and therefore the 
perfect Ideal and Lord, for all who through 
Him learn to love. 

We believe in the Bible as the book that most 
perfectly sets forth the love of God as the guide 
to conduct and as the secret of blessedness, and 
we cherish as sacred all writings in the propor- 
tion that they do the same. 

We believe that the great fundamental evil 
of life, and the great disturbing force of the 
world is want of love, and that salvation both 
for the individual and for society is escape out 
of selfishness into love. 

We believe in the latent good in evil men, and 
that it is our duty to show God's love (that is, 
good will) to them even when we rebuke their 
selfishness and lack of good will. 

We believe in the church as the association 
of those who love, for the purpose of extending 
the sway of love, and that none should be ex- 
cluded from the church except those who ex- 
clude themselves by the truth they cannot see 
and the love they cannot feel. 

We believe in the kingdom of God as the 
85 



86 THE COMING CREED 

sway of God's love, and that to seek the king- 
dom of God is to work for healthfulness, 
beauty, intelligence, and morality for all men, 
to seek justice for the needy and oppressed, 
the overworked and underpaid, and to endeavor 
as far as possible to reduce the terrible miseries 
and inequalities of the world. 

We believe that love is immortal, that those 
who love abide in God and that God abides in 
them. 

This creed is not offered as something to be 
chanted, recited, or imposed as a test. If the 
foregoing chapters have not made this clear 
they have failed in their fundamental purpose. 
It is meant rather as a statement of the princi- 
ples and spirit which underlie and condition a 
true church life. What the laws of navigation 
are to the sailor, what the laws of music are 
to the musician, or the laws of mechanics are to 
the engineer, the creed should be to the church. 
Note how the "engineer in planning and build- 
ing a bridge makes use of his creed. He does not 
sing it, shout it, or subscribe his name to it, but 
he builds it into his work. His entire working 
belief is put there, his convictions about cur- 
rents, wind pressures, leverages and arches are 
embedded in his work. If the work is found to 
be good the creed is declared sound." 

Thus it is that the church must put its creed 
into its life and work. Whatever cannot thus 



A SUGGESTED CREED 87 

be expressed must be thrown out. It is here 
especially that the creeds of other years fail. 
They are largely speculative in character. They 
represent a plan by which to think, rather than 
a plan by which to live and work. They could 
not be expressed in terms of life, because for 
the most part they had but little bearing upon 
life. 

To many earnest Christians it seems a terri- 
ble menace to the church to remove the dogmatic 
conditions which have hitherto been insisted 
upon, and to make the church life a fellowship 
of love. There is need, however, that such peo- 
ple should realize that dogmatic fences, like 
the Apostles 9 Creed, and similar statements, 
with which the churches have been hedged about 
and protected, have been restrictions which have 
been imposed upon the Christ himself. They 
have operated to shut the Christ out because 
they have shut out a great many sincere posses- 
sors of His spirit. There is need also that such 
people should realize that dogma is always di- 
visive, while love is constructive and unifying. 
It draws the souls of men together. Sectarian 
differences will not long continue when the 
churches have become re-established upon a basis 
of love, when they stand pre-eminently for 
brotherhood and service. 

Many churches have already taken a long 
stride in this direction. They are inviting into 



88 THE COMING CREED 

their fellowship all honest believers in goodness 
and fraternity who find in the historic Jesus so 
perfect a manifestation of these principles that 
they are willing to confess Him as their spir- 
itual master. 

This is a long step from the theological in- 
quisition that used to be the test of church mem- 
bership. However, it is in absolute consonance 
with Christ's significant parable of the last 
judgment, and it seems not unlikely that we 
have reached a point where the movement in 
this direction will begin to spread with great 
rapidity. 

For a church with such a spirit and with 
such a programme many earnest souls are wait- 
ing. Good men do not stand aloof from the 
organization because it is too religious, but be- 
cause it is not religious enough. They see it 
uncertain and hesitating in its message, con- 
cerning itself with what seems unreal and non- 
essential, weakened by its divisions and rival- 
ries, and they cannot fully respect it. Many 
who are now without the church would greet 
with ardor a church life that offered them the 
full and abiding love of Christ, that took no 
thought for itself, that dared to stand fairly 
and squarely upon the principle of Jesus, "he 
that loseth his life shall find it," and without 
pretense or equivocation was a fellowship of 
love and service. 



DEC SO 1910 



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